Climate prompts Maldives residents to head for the hills… but so far, they don’t know *which* hills

Sad but true: The new leader of the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean says the country has to start saving up its tourism revenues for the purchase of land somewhere that won’t be inundated by rising seas as a consequence of global warming. Already enough greenhouse gases have been emitted to cause sea-level rise sufficient to blot out the Maldiveans’ homeland.

The story in today’s Globe and Mail by Siri Agrell says the Maldives’ newly elected leader, Mohamed Nasheed, “plans to set aside some of the country’s $1-billion annual tourist revenues to acquire what could be described as an contingency country.” The story quotes Nasheed thusly:

We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.

Other island nations are facing the same prospect. Residents of the Carteret Islands already had to move; folks living in Tuvalu and Kiribati are thinking the same thing will happen to them. More here.

Nasheed’s land-buying scheme — even if the nation is able to locate a vacant, tropical piece of ground to accommodate 350,000 people — doesn’t solve all the problems. For one thing, relocated peoples tend to have high suicide rates. And their status as a nation will fade, despite their current motto: “In National Unity Do We Salute Our Nation.”